Free speech rights recently secured an important legal win against one of California’s overly broad deepfake laws. The case underscores the ongoing difficulty of state legislators trying to regulate AI-generated content without infringing on constitutionally protected speech.

The California law, Assembly Bill 2655, would have required social media platforms to remove or label “materially deceptive” AI-generated political content near elections. Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter, sued, and a federal judge just struck down the law, ruling it was preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content.

Last year, the state enacted two political deepfake laws in the lead-up to the presidential election. AB 2655, th

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